ajaxguy
Well-known member
any good leads on cheap package deals to cuba or dominican. Wanna go next month at some point.
good travel booking site or person?
- Thread starter ajaxguy
- Start date
Selloffvacations.com
We buy our packages from there all the time.
We buy our packages from there all the time.
toshison
Well-known member
I did an all-inclusive last year to cuba in August and booked with itravel2000.com. I found prices to be somewhat similar from site to site but I like itravel2000's website as it is easy to navigate and compare prices and such. Everything worked out just fine and we stayed in a 3.5 and paid a little less than $600 per person.
http://www.tripcentral.ca/ easy site to find the best price.
cleaver
Well-known member
For flights, http://www.hipmunk.com/ has the best search function, although sometimes the purchase links will only have US options. It's a good starting point.
http://yyzdeals.com/ is worth a look too. The package deal finder is useful.
http://yyzdeals.com/ is worth a look too. The package deal finder is useful.
ajaxguy
Well-known member
Must it be Cuba? I had a holiday in the off season in Costa Rica and sorted out flights with Google flights and booked the hotel directly and got steep discounts on accomodation and car hire. It was self catering but to be honest, I ate better and more healthy than in an AI plus the all you can drink aspect is overated (unless you're an alcoholic). Buy a bottle of rum and a load of coke, beer in these countries is dirt cheap from the grocery store and you're set.
toshison
Well-known member
The place we went to was called Palma Real in Varadero and it did the job. If all you care about doing is nothing more than chilling by the beach, getting sunshine and taking it really easy and slow **for CHEAP** than it will do the job. The food is basic but it will do the job. If your expectations for Cuba are realistic and you aren't fussy, a 3.5 resort will suffice.
Most trips I take are backpacker style and with Cuba our initial intention was to fly in to Havana and then travel across the country by bus, staying a night or two in different cities/towns. When I ran the numbers and how much time was needed to do that, it was actually cheaper/faster to just book an all-inclusive in Varadero and then get a car to take us to the places we wanted to go with a personal driver who knows whats up. Cuba is small and you can do a lot if you have a car. Walking around with a backpack looking for bus terminals and such would of been brutal as the heat in august was seriously scorching, especially in havana. It was super hot.
I've also done an all-inclusive in Punta Cana, dominican rep (in august as well) and in comparison, I experienced better food and accomodations there than in Cuba, but it does cost more to go generally speaking. Cuba though is more interesting, especially if you leave the tourist areas..
We found that in August, its also a pretty quiet place to go. Not too many tourists
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I was at Melia Cayo Santa Maria in February, had a great time. Food was good, resort was clean, tidy, beach and water were phenomenal. Enjoy the trip!
Hurricane season.
^ another reason to look at Central America. If a hurricane does turn up they usually miss these places and with it being low season you have some deeply discounted hotels etc. Granted...hottest place I've been to in recent memory was Mexico in late June but....the pool was cool 
I like going in the off season as there's so few tourists.
I also used to do the AI thing all the time and have a weeklong frenzy of eating and drinking but since doing the seperate hotel and flight bookings I feel a lot more free, there's no more ****ing about at 5am to put a towel on a pool chair before some fat tatooed german comes along to start a fight for instance. Biggest bonus...if I don't like a place I can cancel the rest of the hotel stay, pack my bags and bugger off to another part of the country pretty easily.
Edit: I actually did nearly have a fight with a large tatooed German at one place in Cuba but it was over toast.
I like going in the off season as there's so few tourists.I also used to do the AI thing all the time and have a weeklong frenzy of eating and drinking but since doing the seperate hotel and flight bookings I feel a lot more free, there's no more ****ing about at 5am to put a towel on a pool chair before some fat tatooed german comes along to start a fight for instance. Biggest bonus...if I don't like a place I can cancel the rest of the hotel stay, pack my bags and bugger off to another part of the country pretty easily.
Edit: I actually did nearly have a fight with a large tatooed German at one place in Cuba but it was over toast.
^ another reason to look at Central America. If a hurricane does turn up they usually miss these places and with it being low season you have some deeply discounted hotels etc. Granted...hottest place I've been to in recent memory was Mexico in late June but....the pool was cool
I also used to do the AI thing all the time and have a weeklong frenzy of eating and drinking but since doing the seperate hotel and flight bookings I feel a lot more free, there's no more ****ing about at 5am to put a towel on a pool chair before some fat tatooed german comes along to start a fight for instance. Biggest bonus...if I don't like a place I can cancel the rest of the hotel stay, pack my bags and bugger off to another part of the country pretty easily.
Edit: I actually did nearly have a fight with a large tatooed German at one place in Cuba but it was over toast.
she must have really wanted her toast.
If you've been to AI resorts you know they have those conveyor belt toaster things that are painfully slow....so I timed it approximately one morning, put my toast on then wandered off to get the rest of my brekky...came back to find portly german redneck stealing my toast...so I told him"excuse me, I think that's mine"...****er waved it in my face and said "fine, you want it, you want it?"....so I took it out of his hand and had a bite and said cheers.
Also had a problem at this resort with ******** reserving **** for the whole day and never using chairs/umbrellas etc while others baked. One day I pulled my chairs under the shade of one umbrella where the people hadn't turned up for hours...I didn't move any of their stuff or anything..they came back and said "we have reserved these" so I asked them if they had reserved the sun too as it had moved quite a bit since they had gone.
Finally..went to one resort where the stupid reserving **** got totally out of hand (one german bloke would wander down with a pile of 20 towels and cop all the chairs). One English bloke got up early one morning and went round all the chairs around the pool throwing the towels from the chairs into the pool shouting "reserve that ********".
toshison
Well-known member
The whole reserving chairs/umbrellas thing early in the morning with towels is so silly but thats part of the AI game I guess. What I found more irritating than that was that I watched the "security guard" overseeing the resorts restricted beach section negotiate with locals and take money and in exchange let them use several of the chairs/umbrellas reserved for resort guests of which they used all day long. But again, just part of the program.
All-inclusives can be good if you feel like being a lazy arse and don't want to make any effort in planning a holiday but yeah, I couldn't imagine using up my vacay every year doing that.
All-inclusives can be good if you feel like being a lazy arse and don't want to make any effort in planning a holiday but yeah, I couldn't imagine using up my vacay every year doing that.
skitta
Well-known member
Such judgement. "To each his/her own". And that is what is so wonderful about this world; we are all different. Imagine how very boring it would be if we were all the same?
